1 in 20 Georgians

The latest figures show that about five percent of Georgians have been infected with Covid-19, with the state ranking #6 of U.S. states. As of Sunday, it ranks #10 in total number of deaths, with at least 9,806 (8,971 confirmed, 835 “probable”).

Parts of state nearing hospital capacity

Georgia is one of six states with the most counties hitting 90 percent of hospital capacity. (For the first time, HHS has released hospital-level data on the pandemic.)

Note: That story is mostly about the release of the report, but you can download the nationwide HHS data here (from HHS; 44.3MB) or the Georgia-only data here (from GPhA Buzz; 1.1MB). These are .csv spreadsheets with detailed breakdowns of beds.

Sparrow, RPh

Add sparrows to the growing list of animals that self-medicate. Apparently, say Aussie researchers, they “use medicinal herbs to defend against parasites and improve the condition of their offspring” — notably wormwood leaves.

(If you, like me, thought this was a rare thing, think again. Zoopharmacognosy is a thing for dogs, cats, apes, other birds, and even ants and caterpillars.)

“So our results indicate that russet sparrows, like humans, use wormwood as a preventative herbal medicine to protect their offspring against ill health. One has to wonder who is mimicking who?”

Suicide myth

The folks at the University of Pennsylvania would like to remind everyone don’t spread the myth that suicide increases during the holidays. It doesn’t. In fact, CDC data says the opposite — that “For decades, the holiday season has had some of the lowest suicide rates.”

Baby talk

Talking to babies is great, because they can’t talk back and they trust you completely. But it seems that conversation also affects their brain circuitry, and in a different way than the other sounds in their environment.

They found that babies who engaged in more conversations with adults in their everyday lives had less synchronized activation in a network of regions that processes language stimulation.

Wait … less synchronized? Is that good?

“It is not clear at this point whether the correlation between more conversational turns and lower functional connectivity in the posterior temporal cortex means that lower connectivity is a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing,” [lead author Lucy] King said. “Although we can’t know for sure, we speculate that lower connectivity reflects more efficient brain organization.”

Did someone say, “posterior temporal cortex”?

Vaccine reality checks

Too many people are infected now: “No vaccine can eliminate a pandemic immediately, just as no fire hose can put out a forest fire. While the vaccine is being distributed, the virus continues to do damage.”

Because so many Americans are infected now (about 200,000 per day), even 95-percent vaccines “would still leave a terrible toll in the six months after it was introduced.” Estimate: 10 million infections and 160,000 deaths by June.

We may not have enough. Pfizer said it won’t be able to provide more than the initial 100 million doses until June or July. The U.S. government declined an offer to secure more, so other countries bought it instead.

Last summer, Pfizer officials had urged Operation Warp Speed to purchase 200 million doses, or enough of the two-shot regimen for 100 million people […] But the Warp Speed officials declined, opting instead for 100 million doses.

=BUT=

Moderna’s vaccine is also nearing approval, which could help close some of that gap.

=AND=

Pfizer’s vaccine provides good protection even after a single dose.

=ALSO=

AstraZeneca and Oxford University’s vaccine — which goes by the memorable name “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19” — tests at about 70 percent effectiveness at two doses. (Mysteriously, a lower first dose resulted in 90 percent effectiveness, but they don’t yet know why that is.)

Alzheimer’s: no cure, but more info

Washington University researchers have identified a protein — microtubule binding region tau — that can be measured in a person’s cerebrospinal fluid to determine what stage of Alzheimer’s they’re in.

Why is this good news? For one, it can make it easier to tell if a particular treatment is working. For two, it may be able to identify people in the early stages of the disease, before symptoms show.

“If we can translate this into the clinic, we’d have a way of knowing whether a person’s symptoms are due to tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease and where they are in the disease course, without needing to do a brain scan. As a physician, this information is invaluable in informing patient care, and in the future, to guide treatment decisions.”

The next microbiome

If you have money on “lungs” as the next microbiome to be important for health — well, congrats, you win! Swiss researchers have found that a strain of Lactobacillus (Lactobacillus murinus) in the lungs fights off pneumonia bacteria … in mice, at least.

“This suggests that resident commensals in the lung could be applied as probiotics to counteract lung colonisation by pathogenic bacteria.”

You know the mantra: Further studies are needed.